Mainland
Chinese women

forced
into sex trade by snakeheads

Mainland
Chinese women forced into sex trade by snakeheads

2001/4/14

CNA

Two
members of a cross-strait snakehead ring have been nabbed for allegedly
smuggling mainland Chinese women into Taiwan to work in the sex trade, sources
from the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) reported.

The
two Taiwan men, identified as Kao Mu-shan and Chen Ming-chi, were apprehended by
CIB agents Thursday in the northern city of Hsinchu on charges of being involved
in arranging false marriages between mainland women and Taiwan men and then
forcing the women to work as prostitutes in Taiwan. The CIB agents arrested Kao
and Chen after they received a complaint filed by a Taiwan friend of a mainland
woman, surnamed Wan, from Sichuan province's Chongqing City, saying that she was
among six women from mainland China being forced to work as prostitutes in an
underground brothel in Hsinchu. CIB agents raided the underground brothel and
rescued Wan and another mainland woman, surnamed Tsai. According to Wan, she
became acquainted with Chen and Kao last June in Chongqing. Wan married Chen in
December and had their marriage officially registered in both Chongqing and
Taiwan. Chen brought Wan to Taiwan in March of this year but did not take her to
his home. Instead, according to Wan, she was taken directly to Hsinchu by Kao,
who arranged for her to live with five other mainland women in an apartment,
forcing them to work as prostitutes. Wan claims that she had been forced to take
customers 42 times since late March. The police found that the other four
mainland Chinese women, some of whom are college graduates, were also taken to
Taiwan in a similar manner and were forced into prostitution. According to Kao
and Chen, the snakehead ring is actually operated by a man surnamed Hsu, whom
the police are actively tracking down.